The year is 2016, I am 48 years old and if there is one thing that I would go back in time to tell myself is that, in the future, one will actually be able to make a lot of money playing the games – not even creating them – but playing them.

In the 1980s, when the pool halls became replaced by Video Arcades and the consumer war of VHS vs Beta was also being played out in Atari vs Intellivision – video games were deemed to be the new Dungeons & Dragons, Rock n Roll, Comic Books Teenaged Delinquency.

What will it do to the children?

Well, it let us develop extremely fast hand/eye coordination, data absorbing and problem solving skills, strategy and tactics, and it taught us all the stuff that board games and sports does – because those early puzzle games in 8 glorious colours pushed the computer industry to better incorporate graphics.

Which meant, we were better able to understand databases, spreadsheets and mass data, see patterns and correlate faster then those who used handwritten index cards and outlines before writing reports.

From quest games, we played the heros, not just read about them in books or watched in movies. We learned development, researching, resource gathering and networking – allies vs obstacles.

What can a medium teach? whatever the designer can cram in.

Elvis Presley would have been 81 in 2016, not the 18 when he started and became the first teenaged millionaire.

Which is what I think bothered The Adults the most.

He got rich quick, too rich and by living the American Dream – he warped the social fabric by making it possible for all Americans to participate – he played the music he grew up with and loved to the audience who came to see him – in Elvis Presley, with his roots in Scotland and Germany, with a dash of Cherokee in his mother’s line – raised in the last white house on a street that continued into the not-white side of town. Children don’t see the boundaries that their parents do, until they are taught to.

He got rich quick, the wrong way, Pelvis almost as wild as that Hair, which he combed as he chomped gum, his words barely able to slide from his lips with that obstacle and that accent – the generation gap indeed, more like the generation gape.

it actually explains things like that group of christians who wanted gays and lesbians to be banned from appearing on tv games shows because they didn’t want to risk money getting into our community – and we’ve already been a recognized mainstream market niche.

American christians like to think they own the power of boycott, but Dr Laura never made it on TV from radio host.

there is a limit to how long playing the “exclusive better than you club” works and in 2016, selling hate

I would like to say it’s not a good strategy as it was, but that would be in utter denial of the news and current events, but i’d bee deluding myself. People are as they ever have been.

as for porn – excessive is not really the only criteria, gluttony – but also that “for it’s own sake” aspect

the tipping part where it becomes terrible is not porn in and of itself, but rather when it adds the depravity of indifference to suffering – where one has such an excess, while others intentionally have none.

I grew up in Canada, born in 1968 and it’s 2016 now – it feels semi-obscene to me to talk about being able to wake up, go about one’s day without once worrying about being blown up or shot at, go home and have an evening and go to be without worrying about bombs or the door being broken down by government or anti-government agents.

but, it’s 2016, and I can still fear to expect prejudice and judgement and negative reactions from people who learn I am a lesbian and that I am an atheist.

neither of which should have – along with being a woman – been a factor in limiting the career path that I have had – and yet, it has – “legally so” before 1992 and socially because people lag behind the law and the law took from 1992 to 2004 to sort itself out and there is STILL legislation out there.

But that auto-update in language is a different post…. actually that;’s not something I will be posting.

which is why freedom from religion is not just not having it pushed on you

it’s also not having the systemic control or assumption of default.

religion, unlike sexuality, is not innate – it is learned. it is cultural nurture, it is not nature.